A Brief History of the End of the Comments

Then One/WIRED

Earlier this week, Vice’s technology and science news site Motherboarddropped its comments section, opting to replace it with an old school “letters to the editor” feature. Then Reddit launched a news site called Upvoted that didn’t include a comments section. (You can still comment on the stories on Reddit itself.)

What’s going on here? For years, comment boxes have been a staple of the online experience. You’ll find them everywhere, from The New York Times to Fox News to The Economist. But as online audiences have grown, the pain of moderating conversations on the web has grown, too. And in many cases, the most vibrant coversations about a particular article or topic are happening on sites like Facebook and Twitter. So many media companies are giving up on comments, at least for now. So far this year, Bloomberg, The Verge, The Daily Beast and now Motherboard have all dropped their comments feature.

While it’s too soon to say that comment sections are outright dying— there are plenty of major sites that still have comments, including WIRED—it’s safe to say there’s a trend towards replacing them with something else. Here’s a brief history of major publications pulling the plug on comments. Feel free to suggest additions to the timeline in, well, the comments.

September 24, 2012: The Atlantic launches the business news site Quartz without a comments section, but adds comments in the form of “annotations” nearly a year later.

September 24, 2013:Popular Science becomes one of the first major publications to ditch its comments feature, citing studies that found that blog comments can have a profound effect on readers’ perceptions of science. “If you carry out those results to their logical end—commenters shape public opinion; public opinion shapes public policy; public policy shapes how and whether and what research gets funded—you start to see why we feel compelled to hit the “off” switch,” former digital editor Suzanne LaBarre wrote in the site’s announcement.

April 12, 2014: The Chicago Sun-Times suspends its comment feature, citing concerns over the “tone and quality” of the comments while its team developed a new discussion system. Most articles on the site still don’t allow comments.

August 2014: CNN quietly disables comments on most stories sometime during the protests in Ferguson, Missouri.

November 7, 2014: Reuters drops comments for all of its stories except its opinion pieces, saying that social media is a better place for discussion. “Those communities offer vibrant conversation and, importantly, are self-policed by participants to keep on the fringes those who would abuse the privilege of commenting,” executive editor Dan Colarusso wrote in the company’s announcement.

November 20, 2014: Popular tech news site Recodefollows suit, also citing social media as the best way for readers to provide feedback.

December 15, 2014: The winter of comment discontent kicks into high gear as The Weekpulls the plug on comments.

December 16, 2014: The very next day, so does the millennial-focused Mic.com, proving that comment-phobia isn’t just for old media.

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